This was for real. Seattle (Washington) has an annual 'Sea Fair' event which also had unlimited hydroplane racing (WW2 Alison and RR fighter engines for power). Any way between 'rounds ), usually three, Thousands of folks (me/family included) got to watch this:

That's really impressive. I have heard of doing stuff like that with a 272, but that is a much bigger plane there. I have a friend from the Navy that is now a 747 pilot. He sends me videos of stuff like that pretty often. I should upload and post the ones of doing landings in South America in severe cross winds. If any of you ever fly and worry about the strength of those landing gears, you don't need to.

I here you DD, I hear you. Given a choice (when I have to fly) I'll take a Boeing aircraft every time given a choice. Every system is, at the minimum, doubled up. A major system failure? Flip a switch (what-ever) and the back up(s) take over.

The 747's are still an amazement to me. A half million pounds of 'stuff' and it will fly at 500 some miles per hour. When I lived up in Washington my neighbor (ex-AF fighter pilot instructor) worked for Boeing flying the shakedown 'chase jets.' These were Korean War jet fighters stripped of as much weight as they could take off .... save for the gun camera(s).

747 was covered with alum tapes that fluttered in the wind. Point being if there was a 'wrong bend' (or what ever) the gun cameras would pick it up. Sooo, you're chasing an empty 747 ... you took off 20 minutes before so you could get altitude and make 'gun runs' at the thing. Hell of it was the 747 could flat fly away from a Super Saber vintage aircraft.

Fun stuff for Terry, save for one time. A large panel came off the aircraft and damned near 'shot him down.'